Quiet Interlude

Ever since his trip to Mexico, Harry Truman had been waiting for another chance to visit his 94-year-old mother, bedridden in Grandview, Mo. with a broken hip. Last week, to celebrate the beginning of his third year in office, he made a flying trip home.

It was a quiet, pleasant weekend, a welcome change from the Washington hurlyburly. He found his mother pert and chipper, saw his old Battery D mates, went early to bed after dinner in his Hotel Muehlebach suite. His only official duty was a three-minute radio address in honor of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Next morning he was up early, skipped his usual ritual of a morning walk because of chilling rain. His old Army barber, Frank Spina, dropped by to give him a haircut, reported that the presidential locks had scarcely thinned since 1917. Just before noon Harry Truman got the news he had come for. Brigadier General Wallace Graham, the Presidential physician, reported that old Mrs. Truman would be sitting up by the end of the month, might even be able to walk again.

Thus reassured, the President headed back to the White House to face his new crises. On the top of the heap: conferences on the phone strike and Henry Wallace's latest sound-off (see FOREIGN RELATIONS).

The President also:

P: Nominated Washington Investment Banker George A. Garrett as Minister to Eire to succeed crusty, outspoken David Gray, who was retiring after five wartime years of battling belligerent Irish neutrality and keeping Dublin diplomatic circles in an awed uproar.

P: Had a chat with Lincoln Biographer Carl Sandburg, who reported the President "looks like he's standing the racket well."

P: Designated May 1 as Child Health Day, May 11 Mother's Day, May 22 National Maritime Day.

P: Warmed up his southpaw pitching arm to toss out the first ball of the 1947 baseball season, had to take a raincheck when the Senators-Yankees opener was called because of steady showers.

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